On October 29th and November 5th, NEFU-China sent two teams, the first to London and the second to Paris to participate in the International Directed Evolution Competition (iDEC) and International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) respectively. The NEFU project "Opicafé - a kind of coffee that alleviates myopia" won the iGEM Golden Award, the 7th time for the NEFU-China team returning with the Golden Award. The project "Directed Evolution of Key Enzymes of 4-Hydroxymandelic Acid Synthesis Pathway" won the iDEC Silver Award , and 3rd place in the overall results while winning two track awards, one single award, and four nomination awards.
iGEM is a top-level competition in international synthetic biology. This year, more than 400 teams from around the world gathered together in Paris to share their sights and achievements in synthetic biology. After a year of laboratory research, the NEFU-China team realized an efficient biosynthesis of a drug to alleviate pseudomyopia, 7-methylxanthine, with a synthetic yield of 6.54 g/L, which is 18 times higher than the highest yield reported in the literature. The reviewers highly affirmed the results of the team and expected the results to be published soon through the paper.
iDEC is an international competition that takes biologically directed evolutionary engineering as the theme, and is aimed at promoting innovation and application of technology in the directed evolution field. In this year’s competition, the NEFU-China team used directed evolution and metabolic engineering techniques to successfully screen out mutants with high ethyl 4-hydroxymandelate production, taking directed evolution of key enzymes of the 4-hydroxymandelic acid synthesis pathway as the participating theme. Through the multiple links of competition such as live defenses, webpage making and poster presentation, the NEFU-China team overpowered other more well-known universities such as the University of Edinburgh, University of Science and Technology of China, Tongji University, and walked away with the silver award. After three years, the team representing NEFU once again participated in a top international competition. A total of 16 undergraduates from the College of Life Sciences and Aulin College stood on the international stage, communicating and learning with scientists, graduate students, and undergraduates from Harvard University, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Stanford, Cornell University, Peking University, Tsinghua University, University of Science and Technology of China and other top universities around the world, leaving many wonderful memories.
After the competition, the team visited Herunyuan Biotechnology, a high-tech enterprise of biology in Shanghai, understanding the rapid progress of industrialization of life sciences.
The NEFU-China team has fully demonstrated the fruitful results of NEFU’s innovative talent cultivation to the world by competing with high-level universities from around the world, and the excellent performance of our students has further enhanced the international influence of NEFU. The NEFU-China team will forge ahead with fortitude and make “Strong voice of NEFU” on the world stage.
